He was a charismatic leader, and he reduced poverty by 50% in his country. Good things.

But he did them by raping the democratic process in the country, building personal power base, and crapping all over his foreign policy. Getting on better terms with Panama and the Antilles is a good thing, but doing so at the expense of your biggest trading partners is folly in the long term.

If he was so bad, the people would have kicked him out long ago. If he was so good, he wouldn't have had to play games with the constitution to stay in power the way he liked. A truly great leader empowers those around him, and is able to hand off the reins to other capable hands without hanging on to the bitter end.

Subby; Chavez was good for Venezuela's poor. Not defending his methods, corruption, and anti-democratic actions, but you can't honestly say he didn't do a lot to improve the lives of the country's poor.

Right, troll-mitter. I bow to your expertise in international diplomacy. Anyone with the slightest clue knows that Hugo Chavez was not the great champion of the poor he made himself out to be. A few Farkers have shared some particularly horrific stories about the conditions there, and how his detractors were treated, and I have no problem believing them.

On the other hand, it would serve absolutely no purpose for an ex-president, a statesman, to be dancing on the grave of Chavez when his charity has been directly involved in both observing their elections and vaccinating their people against debilitating tropical diseases. When you're in the business of trying to eliminate sickness and alleviate poverty on a global scale, you'll end up dealing with many asshats like Chavez, and calling them out publicly isn't going to further your goals.

Not to mention, our current government does not want to continue the Tupac-Biggie style beefin' that escalated between Hugo and Dubya. In my opinion, it was one of the silliest feuds ever. I hope that the new leader of Venuzuela will be less corrupt and more open to freedom and criticism. I hope he learns from the bad things that Chavez did and corrects them. Unfortunately, Hugo was still quite popular with many people, so it would not be very diplomatic for our leaders to speak badly of him, even if what they said was true.

By bringing up the topic of poverty in his statement, President Carter seems to want to ensure that the poor won't be forgotten by the new government, while being tactful enough to recognize that we are trying to repair our relations with Venuzuela. It's more fitting that the celebrating be left to those who were directly harmed by Mr. Chavez and his policies.

The hard facts are unmistakable: The oil-rich South American country is in shambles. It has one of the world's highest rates of inflation, largest fiscal deficits, and fastest growing debts. Despite a boom in oil prices, the country's infrastructure is in disrepair-power outages and rolling blackouts are common-and it is more dependent on crude exports than when Chávez arrived. Venezuela is the only member of OPEC that suffers from shortages of staples such as flour, milk, and sugar. Crime and violence skyrocketed during Chávez's years. On an average weekend, more people are killed in Caracas than in Baghdad and Kabul combined. (In 2009, there were 19,133 murders in Venezuela, more than four times the number of a decade earlier.) When the grisly statistics failed to improve, the Venezuelan government simply stopped publishing the figures.

I don't care for Chavez at all subby, but I'm tired of people living in alternate realities. Chavez more than doubled Venezuela's literacy rate, slashed the number of people going hungry by more than 90%, and made basic healthcare available to many people in a country who had previously only dreamed of meeting a real doctor. He was anti-democratic, not good for the long run economy due to a lack of investment in critical infrastructure, and frequenlty antagonized countries and companies that could have been beneficial to his attempts at helping people. He was a mixed bag at best, but to pretend that he didn't help Venezuela's underclass would be a gross mischaracterization of his record.

ongbok:He did stop the super wealthy and foreign corporations from raping the country. His methods in doing so and quieting his opposition may not have been desirable, but if he didn't take the steps that he did, his opposition probably would have killed him a long time ago.

Another thing is that when he was ousted in a coup, the people of Venezuela demanded that he be put back into office.

And you could VERY correctly claim he over did his actions against multi-national corps. But thing is, how much can you blame them? Foreign corps. have screwed over developing countries for hundreds of years. They shouldn't be shocked that occasionally people will get pissed off enough to fight back.

He's a communist, in the circa 1980 Soviet/Chinese sense of the word. Communism does help the poor, in the sense that nobody (circa 1980; I'm not talking about earlier purges and "Great Leap Forward" and the like that killed hundreds of millions) starves to death, but innovation and freedom are curtailed, and few people (other than a few politically connected elites) are not "upper lower class".

The report I have from Venezuelans I personally know is that Chavez's government likes to imprison opponents and kill people. They are all middle class (or more) and think he's pretty much a monster dictator. I was pretty surprised. I thought he was bad, but I didn't think this was going on to the extent they claim.

Satanic_Hamster:Subby; Chavez was good for Venezuela's poor. Not defending his methods, corruption, and anti-democratic actions, but you can't honestly say he didn't do a lot to improve the lives of the country's poor.

He did stop the super wealthy and foreign corporations from raping the country. His methods in doing so and quieting his opposition may not have been desirable, but if he didn't take the steps that he did, his opposition probably would have killed him a long time ago.

Another thing is that when he was ousted in a coup, the people of Venezuela demanded that he be put back into office.

Jackson Herring:Satanic_Hamster: Subby; Chavez was good for Venezuela's poor. Not defending his methods, corruption, and anti-democratic actions, but you can't honestly say he didn't do a lot to improve the lives of the country's poor.

Of COURSE you can. Don't you know that Jimmy Carter is a Democrat and Chavez was a "liberal"? You can say anything you want because liberals are bad, QED

And that's what it's all about. Reading conservative blogs today, it's "OK, Chavez died and good riddance. And now: 8 paragraphs of liberal bashing!! Hate them!! Hate them until your eyeballs bleed!!".

DamnYankees:Chavez may have done many horrible things, but giving stuff to poor people wasn't one of them.

He really didn't even do that horrible of things. For his third election he gerrymandered the districts in the country so that the election was more favorable towards him and his win margin would be even larger.

I swear, there something or someone here that I could have sworn did the same thing. I wish I could put my finger on it.

kingoomieiii:DamnYankees: Why is it horrible of O'Reilly to say it about Obama, but everyone is right to say it about Chavez?

Because when O'Reilly says it, he's lying.

He's not, really. He was accurately describing the situation - people voted for the candidate they thought would be better for then. He just thought it was a BAD thing, and he used pejoratives to describe the situation when it should have been described positively.

Satanic_Hamster:Subby; Chavez was good for Venezuela's poor. Not defending his methods, corruption, and anti-democratic actions, but you can't honestly say he didn't do a lot to improve the lives of the country's poor.

But the media has always told me that 100% of the things that Hugo Chavez did were bad! Not one thing he did benefited anyone in his country, ever!

I don't understand this criticism of Chavez. The Venezualian people supported him because he gave them stuff. This is bad? Isn't this exactly O'Reilly's critique of Obama? Why is it horrible of O'Reilly to say it about Obama, but everyone is right to say it about Chavez?

Chavez may have done many horrible things, but giving stuff to poor people wasn't one of them.